Notes on Crampton Smith Reading

Due to the quantity and quality of your sublime insights into Run Lola Run yesterday, we got a little behind and didn’t talk too much about the Crampton Smith reading, “Designing for Everyday Life.” I thought I’d use the blog to catch up on that a little bit.

Much of its argument rehearses the argument in favor of what is now known as “third wave HCI,” that is, that HCI can no longer just be about creating usable systems, as measured by fast task completion times, low error rates, high learnability, high subjective satisfaction, etc. Rather, now that computers are part of everyday life, they have to serve our every needs as individuals, as social beings, as people with aesthetic and experiential and not just functional needs, etc. Since that is familiar to most of you by now, we don’t need to spend too much time on it.

There were a few juicy quotes that I would like to share, however:

However, after twenty years of drawing on existing expressive languages, we now need to develop an independent language of interaction with smart systems and devices, a language true to the medium of computation, networks, and telecommunications. In terms of perceptual psychology, we’re starting to understand the functional limits of interaction between people and devices or systems: speed of response, say, or the communicative capacity of a small screen. But at the symbolic level of mood and meaning, of sociability and civility, we haven’t quite achieved the breathtaking innovativeness, the subtlety and intuitive “rightness,” of Eisenstein’s language of montage. (xviii-xix)

In many ways, this paragraph is the challenge that Interaction Culture is accepting, the point of why we are doing all of this, arguably the central question of my own intellectual life. To help elucidate it, I’ll define a few key words in it.

“Expressive language” is a metaphor that we’ll talk a lot about this semester, particularly in the second of the four “ways in” that I talked about yesterday: work- or artifact-centered perspectives. The idea is that every medium of expression has units of meaning and rules for combining them: words and grammar for poetry and prose; paint strokes, perspective, conventions of representation for painting; shots, actors, lines of script, soundtracks, and editing conventions for film; etc. So Crampton Smith is saying that interaction designers can of course borrow other expressive vocabularies (e.g., from animation, typography, page layout, etc.) but that we really also should be trying to discover vocabularies unique to digital interaction.

Sergei Eisenstein was an early theorist of film, who is known for developing a theory of montage, which refers to the technique of cutting different shots together and how when shot 1 and shot 2 are placed together, a new third meaning appears as we make connections between the two. A classic example in early Soviet cinema was editing together shots of laborers protesting and shots of animals being slaughtered: a third meaning, suggesting that capitalists are doing violence to the working class, emerges–a common Marxist theme popular in the heady early days of the Soviet government, which was financially supporting Eisenstein. Regardless, montage became after Eisenstein one of the most fundamental considerations/techniques in filmmaking and film theory: the early theorization of montage represented a massive breakthrough for film. Crampton Smith is challenging us to be the Eisensteins of interaction design. No problem: we’ve got 16 weeks….

Elsewhere, Crampton Smith raises the concept of “qualities,” as in this example:

The interactive systems we design have implicit as well as explicit meanings. A design may communicate its purpose clearly, so that it’s obvious what it is and what we should do with it. But its qualities, its aesthetic qualities particularly, speak to people in a different way. Consciously or not, people read meanings into artifacts…. Artists and designers are trained to use the language of implicit meanings to add a rich communicative element over and above direct functional communication. (xiv)

This is a chance for you to engage the reading. Can you point to an example of an implicit meaning that is used to improve a particular design’s aesthetic quality? Reply to this post with your example. It would be really cool to have a small inventory of this sort of example.

Rayne, I agree with you comment on the material that is used to make the shell of Apple laptops. I feel that Apple does that with if not all of their products, most of them. They put this nice finsh on their product to make it look more elegant than their competiors. For example, the new iPod touch, that now come in different colors that the original classic black and white. Just because they now have a different color everyone wants the “new iPod touch”. The color is there to express ones personal preference instead of having the classic colors as they used to have.

I agree that glasses style do convey certain meaning. I know for me personally when I started wearing glasses when I was younger ( like 3rd grade) my first pair were absolutely the ugliest things that I have ever seen. The reason that I got that particular style was 1) I was young so I had to have a style that was made for kids, 2) I was young so I would probably break them or lose them, 3) the fact that I might break my glasses or lose them, my mother decided to buy me the cheapest but efficient pair of glasses. Which I completely understand, that makes sense now, but when I was younger it didn’t. Also that back then my glasses didn’t convey MY personality, etc but now that I am older, I buy glasses that do display my personality, style, and whatever does make my lenses look super thick because I have not the sharpest vision if you catch my drift! 😉

I may “nominate” my old iPhone case. It is a very normal case but has two bunny ears. Actually those ears are handles you can use to pull you iPhone out from your handbag, pocket, etc. But they are so cute and sweet and make me think my iPhone is a tiny bunny. I think this implies the so-called cuteness/pinkness culture in Asia…

When talking about the implicite meaning, one example I can think about is branding. Take i-product as an example, apple produces high-quality products, that’s true, but many people choose to buy i-product because they can see some other values they care about through the products like fashionable, stylish, beautiful, new, etc. The values can reflect the customers’ believes and self-identity, so people acknowledge them. The implicite meanings of the other brands also functions in the similar way.

I was thinking about bike seats. I bought a bike that had a seat on it that was really narrow, black, sporty looking. For my birthday my boyfriend bought me a really nice leather Brooks saddle that was much shorter than the one I had on my bike originally. This Brooks saddle is tan, leather… kind of showy really (it has copper on it) but it’s described as a female saddle – meaning it’s wider and shorter than a male’s saddle (exclude the thought “are they implying my ass is too big?”). The physical comfort I get from this seat is incredible, making me realize how bad the other one hurt, and the fact that it’s this beautiful tan leather makes me happy to own it. At first glance it looks like a fancy seat for a bike, but the comfort it offers me is way better than the sport one I had and it does imply different standards or characteristics of the rider (moi) than a sporty one may convey.

Meredith, your example reminds me of basketball shoes! (of course something basketball related!) But the reason it reminds me of basketball shoes is that I know that most people (including myself sometimes) go for the shoes that look the “coolest” on the court and the most popular athlete is wearing but isn’t always the most comfortable shoe to play in. This might just be the opposite of your bike seat story now that I think about it but nevertheless, sometimes the “not so visually appealing” shoe comes along to be the most comfortable shoe to play in and you never want to get rid of them. When I was growing up I wanted the “coolest” looking shoes now that I have grown up and playing college basketball that requires me to put a lot of mileage on basketball shoes I have to go with whatever feels comfortable to my feet (Adidas wise) and go with it rather than looking at the style.

Pills! One of the first readings we did for experience design comes from van Gorp & Adams’ book “Design for Emotion.” A snippet on page 10 explains that pills, stimulants in particular, “worked better when colored red, orange, or yellow;” colors that seem to imply greater efficacy/virility than a plain white pill.